Benjamin Church (1639-1717)
}} * First US Army Ranger Officer * Veteran Officer of King Philip's War * Veteran Officer of King William's War * Veteran Officer of Queen Anne's War Biography Benjamin Church was an English colonist in North America. He was a military leader of the historic predecessor of the United States Army Rangers,1 captain of the first Ranger force in America (1676).2 Church was commissioned by Josiah Winslow (1628-1680), the Governor of the Plymouth Colony, to form the first ranger company for King Philip's War. He later commanded the company to raid Acadia during King William's and Queen Anne's wars in the early 1700s, as French and English hostilities played out in North America. The two powers were competing for control in colonial territories. He was promoted to major and ended his service at the rank of colonel, as noted on his gravestone. Church designed his forces to emulate Indian practices of warfare. Toward this end, he worked to adopt Indian techniques of small, flexible forces that used the woods and ground for cover, rather than mounting frontal attacks in military formation.1 English colonists developed as rangers under the tutelage of their Native American allies. (Until the end of the colonial period, rangers depended on Indians as both allies and teachers.)3 Church developed a special full-time unit that combined European colonists, selected for their frontier skills, with friendly Indians in order to carry out offensive strikes against hostile Indians and French in difficult terrain. He used such rangers as militia where the normal practices of having troops march and attack in formation were ineffective. His memoirs, Entertaining Passages relating to Philip's War, were published in 1716 and are considered to constitute the first American military manual. King Philip's War King Philip's War (1675-1678) was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day New England and English colonists and their Native American allies. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay in April 1678. Military Engagements * Great Swamp Fight of 1675 King William's War Queen Anne's War Vital Records Little Compton Gravestone * Gravestone Location: Old Commons Burial Ground, Little Compton, Rhode Island * PLOT MEETING HOUSE LANE AT THE COMMONS ->50 ft. N of tel pole #501 References * Benjamin Church * Church in Plymouth County, Massachusetts * - Wikipedia * #24720663 Primary Sources *Church, Benjamin, as told to Thomas Church, The History of Philip's War, Commonly Called The Great Indian War of 1675 and 1676, edited by Samuel G. Drake,(Exeter, NH: J & B Williams, 1829); Facsimile Reprint by Heritage Books, Bowie, Maryland, 1989. *''The history of King Philip's War ; also of expeditions against the French and Indians in its Eastern parts of New England, in the years 1689, 1692, i696 AND 1704. With some account of the divine providence towards Col. Benjamin Church''. By Benjamin Church, Thomas Church, Samuel Gardner Drake(See Benjamin Church - Online Book) *Church, Thomas. The History of the Great Indian Wa''r Church's Book '''Secondary Sources' *Drake, Samuel. The Border Wars of New England, commonly called King William's and Queen Anne's Wars. 1910. Drake's book *Faragher, John Mack, A Great and Noble Scheme New York; W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. *Philip Gould. (1996). Reinventing Benjamin Church: Virtue, Citizenship and the History of King Philip's War in Early National America. Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 645–657 *Grenier, John. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005). *Philbrick, Nathaniel, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Viking Penguin, 2006. *Zelner, Kyle F. A Rabble in Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen during King Philip's War (New York: New York University Press, 2009) Category: King Philip's War Category:Participants of King Philip's War Category:Officers of King Philip's War Category:Casualties of King Philip's War Category:Plymouth Colony Militia Veteran of King Philip's War Category:People in King William's War Category:People in Queen Anne's War Category:Military history of Acadia Category:Canadian military personnel from Nova Scotia Category:Military history of New England Category:Canadian military personnel from New Brunswick Category:Military history of the Thirteen Colonies Category:American military personnel Category:British American Army Rangers Category:People of colonial Massachusetts Category:People of colonial Rhode Island Category:Acadian history Category:King William's War